Never
by Stretch
Summary: Sometimes history is doomed to repeat itself. Sometimes history's mistakes are as well... ~Please R&R!!!!!~ New Chapter Up!
1. Generation 1

A/N:  I'm not quite sure why I wrote this.  I was feeling inspired I guess.  It's a little…deep in some places, but I'd really like to hear what you think of it.  Some information is taken from the novel, but no scenes came directly from there.  Well, thanx and enjoy.

I never told my grandchildren the story.  Never displayed any medals.  Never got any to begin with, but wouldn't have displayed them anyway.  I never marched in a parade or went to the local High School to talk about my experiences or the brutality of war of the necessity of supporting our country.  I was never in a war, and yet I was a veteran.  I never stood to support the freedom of my country, yet I was a defender.  I never fought for what I believed in, yet I was a soldier.

            But there never was a war, just one man's madness.  And I never believed in what I was doing, I was just naive.  I was young and impressionable and eager for power and respect.  But I can make enough excuses to last ten lifetimes and it still wouldn't be enough.  Not enough to take back what I did.  Not enough to lift the guilt from my mind, my heart.  My soul.

            'Mutants' was the subject in every sentence in our debriefing.  Never students, or minors, or innocents…,or children.  

            "Take these," a middle-aged officer told me after our debriefing, shoving a small, plastic package into my hands.  A baggie, containing two small, rubber-like spheres.  "For your ears.  Female on the second floor with a killer voice.  Trust me," he chuckled as if full of wisdom and gung-ho attitude, "you'll need 'em."

            "Report to barrack C in 1900 hours," I was informed days before our mission was to begin.  "You will be fitted for the lining of your uniform."

            "But the uniforms are already water sealed," I retorted stupidly.

            "Yes, but water sealant will hardly keep out the heat caused by high pressure fireballs.  The lining will keep you skin from incinerating."  

            I should have been terrified, but I was actually looking forward to it.  It was a time of peace, not many men saw action in those days.  I thought I was one of the lucky ones.  I remembering thinking that maybe I was up for some kind of promotion, and this was the test.  This was the chance to prove that I could handle combat as well as strategy and history and the rest of the crap learned from books that I had no patience with.  I wanted action, I wanted danger, I wanted adventure.  What I should've done was gone out and purchased a good Tom Clancy novel.  What I did was report to duty.

            I took my earplugs.

            I had the high-tech flame retardant put into my uniform.

            I sold my soul to the devil for a few selfish dreams and a pack of bad lies.

It was time.  We assembled, the privates, the nobodies, in the groups we had been assigned to.  Not platoons.  There weren't enough of us for those.  These were just groups.  Groups of men, a few women.  Some old and withered, some young and green, like myself.  Some with friends, with family, children, wives, love.  Selected from bases and academies around the country.  Brought here to train for six months.  To become an elite group.  Not like the Green Beret.  They we flashy and well known.  We lived in shadows and sewers.  You never saw our guts, and we only expected hidden glories.  But anyway, we gathered.  Awaited the orders from our commanding officers.  Lt. Lyman approached, led his group away.  I heard the hum of rotating Blackhawk blades in the distance, and strained my ears to hear them fade as the first wave went in.  More waiting, as nary a peep escaped from the mouths of all those men.  My lieutenant appeared next.  Lt. Richards, like Lt. Lyman and all the lieutennients here, had been with the General for years.  They knew him, the Great General Stryker, as well as each other.  His mission was there's.  This night would finally justify all their work, their sweat and blood.  Their existence.  You would've thought they'd be nervous, but no.  They were calm as stone.  We went.

Side by side in the cramped quarters of the helicopter interior.  The smell of sweat was pungent in the air, despite the roaring wind through the open para-trooper doors.  But we weren't parachuting in.  We were repelling.  I was jingling my foot, I remember, because it made the metal clasps on my climbing harness rattle.  I wasn't scared exactly, it was just a nervous habit.  We were only a bare minute behind the first wave.  We had to be ready.

            "Remember your briefing, men," Richards bellowed over the roar of the blades above us.  "Keep your heads.  Remember the safety of the people may depend on our success.  Do your country proud, men.  Do your duty."  You know what happened to me when he said that.  I got goose-bumps.  It was the kind of speech the soldiers lived for.  I was ready to serve my duty, my country.  I felt brave and mighty and patriotic all at the same time.  No less than two days ago had the President been attacked, now it was my chance to show that you couldn't play that way in the US.  I was surprised my heart hadn't burst from pride and love for my country.  I didn't see it as genocide then.  At that point in time, the last thing I felt like was a nazi.  Mutants were like Al Queda, the Ok City bomber, and anyone else who stood in the way of freedom, democracy, and life.  They weren't another race, they were just terrorists.  And they would die like the rest of those violent sons-of-bitches had.  The shout rang out.

"On your feet men!  Let's move!"  We sprang to our feet, reflexes trained to be lightening fast.  I slipped the earplugs in my ear.  My hands locked onto the thick cable and I slid

all

 the

  way

   down, till my feet hit the roof with a THUD.  More THUDS followed.  Then each man broke off.  More repelling, only this time it was one man to one window.  I locked my cable onto the narrow lip of the roof, and prayed to any Gods out there that may aim was true.  I kicked out into the air that night, and streaked downward for what seemed like forever and I was sure that I'd missed my mark.  But sure enough…CRASH!  Glass exploded everywhere as hit the pane and tumbled to my feet somewhere on the second floor of the building.  I heard similar crashes all around me as I strode to the nearest door and thrust it open.  Two feminine screams from within heralded my arrival.  My gun was already leveled, though, and two swift thrusts of my pointer finger cut both screams short.  Two nightclad figures fell to the floor in a heap.  I re-cocked my weapon, and loaded in two more tranq. darts.  My job here wasn't to kill.  My job was to capture retain.  But hell, if that was my job, then I'd do it right!  Another door, another room, this one empty.  I went to move on, but stopped, glancing back inside.  

The interior wasn't bizarre.  In fact, quite the opposite.  It was normal as vanilla ice cream.  The walls were blue, and covered in posters of the Boston Red Sox, The White Stripes, and the 2000 Olympic Snowboarding team.  There was a bed, clothes strewn on the floor.  A desk, with a picture frame on it.  Four kids, two boys, two girls, all young.  The glass was shattered.  I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The ear piece we had all been equipped with crackled to life.  

"We got trouble in the north wing, first floor.  Hostile assailant has our men trapped.  Three men down, two not responding.  I repeat…"  The queasy feeling vanished as I abandon the room and headed down the hallway.  We'd all been well prepped in the layout of the large estate, and I had a lot of ground to cover to get to the north wing.  Running, I took the first staircase that I saw.  Blood stained the walls.  'Blood?' I had a moment to wonder, when suddenly I was there.  The first floor was the exact opposite of the second.  There were screams and shouts and…gunfire?  Two dark shapes darted in front of me.  I raised my weapon when one of them turned.  I was taking aim, when I was thrown backwards, blinded by a series of loud explosions and colorful sparks.  By the time I got to my feet, the pair was gone.  My earpiece was gone as well.  Dazed and confused, I wandered aimlessly for I'm not sure how long.  I was seeing fewer and fewer people, and the screams were getting less and less frequent.  But what I saw on my wandering was worse.  Bullet holes were ripped into walls and furniture.  Red footprints covered the ground.  Then I turned the corner.

I was in the wrong part of the house.  Way wrong.  What I had found wasn't the north wing, it was the kitchen…and three of my men lying dead.  Stabbed through the heart with what looked like a giant, three-pronged fork.  There was…so much….I couldn't keep it down.  I turned around and lost it.  I was violently sick, sicker than I ever remember being.  I'd always thought that, in the heat of battle, I'd be strong.  I was wrong.  I learned that in the heat of battle no one is strong.  No one is brave.  No one lives for the glory, because in the heat of battle, all you want is an end.  That's why this battle had turned from capture to kill.  Because the other side wanted an end as well.  They wanted to live, we wanted to stop them from living.  Two goals, no means.  I crawled from the room on shaking knees, and rose to my feet with the help of the doorframe.  I walked slowly down the hall, gun clutched in one shaky hand, the other helping me stay upright.  Turned the corner into the first room I saw.  It was a library.  It was the place_ he_'d chosen to hide.

He was a boy, couldn't have been more than ten.  He was huddled under a table, cradling a right arm which was bleeding profusely, but when he saw me he emerged from hiding.  I'm not sure why exactly.  He turned to face me, and I saw the thin, black scale-like pattern that covered his arms a neck.  He was a mutant…he was a child.  Like the kids in the picture upstairs…and whoever lived in that room…and the two girls who never finished screaming…    

The child, for that's all he was, looked at me with his massive, green eyes.  He saw me and I saw him, and for one brief moment, our eyes locked and the world stopped.  And I saw, in those innocent eyes, acceptance of the fate I was going to commit him to.  I saw a past that held only the pain of difference and separation, and a future that held more of the same.  But for the present, his present, I saw one brief, shining moment of light and joy and acceptance.  For that one brief second, I felt that he was my child, and that the peace he had discovered at the school, this school, was part of me as well.  I let the metal slip from my fingers.  I didn't have the strength or the will to tote it anymore.

'An end…All we look for is an end,' I remember thinking as the gun, _my _gun fell to the floor with a clatter.  I stared at it, dumbfounded for a moment, until I heard a shot ring out.

That was it.  The silent bubble burst and time started again…and my young companion hit the floor.  His eyes were still open wide as the life fled from his body.  As the blood seeped into the floorboards beneath him.  Dead, undeniably, he still saw everything.  The pain around him.  The chaos of destruction.  And the speed at which Corman, my comrade approached me as he lowered his still smoldering gun to his side.

"Judson!  You alright?  What happened back there?"  he demanded, giving me a once over to see that I wasn't hurt, as if there could be no other explanation for dropping my weapon.  His voice sounded distant and far away, like he was shouting from the opposite end of a subway tunnel.  I found that my own eyes were drifting around unfocused, and my vision was blurry.  But I could see well enough to identify the full pack of tranquilizer darts clipped to Corman's belt.  

             "Judson, what the hell.  Get your weapon and get moving.  We still got boys in trouble by the main entranceway."  Corman was shouting over his shoulder to me as he ran back down the hall, fingering his ear piece, and giving the young boy's body a swift kick as he flew by.  My hand retrieved the gun from the floor, slowly and by instinct only.  I was no longer in control of my body.  I was no longer there.  

Corman had made it twenty yards down the hallway.  

I felt the cool gunmetal come into contact with the bar flesh of my hand.

Twenty five.

I brought my trigger hand up, level with my chest.

Thirty.

I raised the revolver.

He had reached the split in the hallways.

I pulled the trigger.

"An end…"

Corman fell, lost somewhere between the left path…and the right one.  He never got to help out our boys in the entranceway.  They all died at the hands of the only full grown male inhabitant of the house.  He also never got to shoot another kid.  The rest all made it out alive somehow.  And I never had to watch another man ,or child, fall.

I left that night.  Just left.  I walked to the nearest door, into the woods on the outside of the property, and never turned back.  I went back home, never spoke of the incident, of Corman, or the mutant kid with bright green eyes.  My own son had bright green eyes.  His daughter does now too.  My wife had brown eyes, but when she died, I closed hers.  She didn't have to lay there with them open so she could watch her own blood flow into the floorboards.  Her blood didn't flow, that was the problem.  She died of a blood clot in her left aorta.  And me, well I'm still alive and I still remember.    

The blood washed off my hands after that night.  The bodies disappeared through some means or another.  The students returned.  The survivors moved on.  The world covered up what happened that night under a layer of lies and scar tissue.  And I tried to heal.  But each night in my dreams the blood still clings, and the bodies litter the floor.  Children scream through the darkness and flee in terror as gunfire resounds through the night.  And there is no good or bad, no right or wrong.  Only madness and the will to survive and pain and terror.  Every day I get up and go to work, see the grandchildren, take a walk.  Anything to distract myself.  But at night I can never hide from the memories that I wish were dreams, and I can't erase the past, which I wish was still a changeable future.  

A/N:  Now go review, cause I want to know if this was decent or a crappy waste of my time


	2. Generation 2

A/N: I know I said that Never was going to be a one shot visionette, but then I had this idea and…POOF, this second chapter was born.  I know it's a little long, but please read, enjoy, and review!

He kept it folded in a box in our attic, my dad did.  He never knew I'd seen it.  But one day, years ago, as I dug around looking for Christmas lights and my mom's lost nativity scene figures, I found it.

The cardboard box was shoved to the back of the drafty attic.  There was nothing unusual about it-wrinkled and water stained and faded from age-and yet the box somehow called out to me.  So silently I crept towards it, scaling mountains of summer clothes and repelling though valleys of loose floor boards and stray, pink insulation.  I guess I couldn't have been more than ten at the time, and the whole endeavor seemed like some kind of wild adventure, the kind of adventures that I longed to have.

It took all the strength my skinny arms had to pry that box out from under a deck umbrella and other stray junk.  It took even greater strength to pry myself out from the avalanche that ensued, but I had accomplished my goal; I had my prize.  My mom was an organization freak, so everything in the attic, despite size, shape or color, had a label.  Consequently, this box was no exception.  The surprising thing was, however, that it was in my dad's writing that the box bore on its tiny label.  And it didn't read **college clothes misc. **or **pictures from summer home** in large letters, as I expected.  It only read **Private **in concise, bold script across the front.

The excitement welling in my chest seemed to burst through my fingertips as they pried the dusty lid off my newly discovered treasure.  I felt reckless and wild, peeking at something I shouldn't have, and heaven help me, I liked the feeling a little.  My life up till then had been very plain-Jane, middle class suburbia, three square meal-a-day boring.  I was sheltered.  I was over-protected.  I was bored as hell, and to a ten year old, breaking Daddy's rules was as rebellious as things got.

I don't know what I expected to find, but as I removed that newspaper wrapped package, it could've been rusted sheet metal and I wouldn't have cared.  As I peeled back the faded yellow paper my heart soared.  And then I saw it.  'Judson' stitched in perfect, white lettering on a background of abstract greens, blacks, and tans.

"Whoa, camouflage!" I unfolded the fatigues and spread them across my lap.  "Cool…"  To a Wonder Bread raised kid, this was like something out of a comic book.  My Dad was in the army…my Dad had been a soldier!  I never thought as to why my father never told me of his past..  I never noticed the blood stains either. I was still protected by the child-size blinders that I'd been raised in.  Daddy was a computer programmer, Mommy sold houses, and everything was peachy.  But now, Daddy had a secret past too…and I was in on it!

'Rules are not meant to be broken' was one of my father's favorite mantras growing up.  Maybe that's why discovering the secret hidden in the attic was such a big deal.  I guess you can say that I had a strict childhood.  My father wasn't all touchy-feely like some dad's are to their kids.  No, he pretty much left that sappy stuff up to my mother.  It wasn't that my father was mean…or neglectful.  It was even worse in some ways…it was an absence of emotion.  He came to the baseball games and the school concerts and the PTA meetings, but he never seemed happy about it.  He never seemed _anything_ about it.  He was like a shell of a man, hollow and empty inside.  

I guess he drank more than most of my friend's dads did, but never when I was around…or, at least when he thought I wasn't around.  And even then, I never saw him raise a hand to my mother, and he never got rough with me.  He was as emotionally barren when he was drunk as he was sober.  I guess the only thing the booze did was help him forget…well, whatever it was that haunted his dreams and made yell at night.  He would just sit there on the couch in his boxers, with only a bottle of beer and his memories for company.  One night I accidentally rolled out of bed and woke up.  I saw the light shining down the hall and peeked around the corner, only to find my Dad awake once again.  It wasn't the first night I'd seen this, but it was the first time I ever said anything.  Maybe it was the soda I had before bed, or maybe after my personal adventure in the attic I was feeling bolder.  Maybe it was the adrenaline left over from the thrill discovering my Dad's secret identity.  Whatever it was though, it gave me the strength to take a risk once more…  

"Daddy?" I called cautiously.  I didn't see the empty beer bottles on the opposite side of the chair.  All I saw were the tears on my father's cheeks, leaking from his eyes as he stared ahead at the muted TV.  I approached him quickly, before I lost my nerve.  "Dad?"

"Oh Rick…you're such a good kid."  He drooped his limp arm about my shoulder as I reached his side, pulling me close.  The whisky on his breath made my eyes water, but I was more frightened of the tears.  They were the scariest things I'd ever witnessed in my young life.  My dad always said that grown men don't cry…my father didn't cry.

I didn't cry.

"Be…be a good kid for the rest of your life," he muttered thickly.  I nodded, wishing that I could just vanish into thin air.  This was one situation my early education hadn't prepared me to deal with.  "Don't make the same mistake you're old man did…be gooder than I was."

"Okay Daddy," I assured him, nodding emphatically and frantically trying to free myself from his bear-like grip.  But he just held me tighter.  And my words seem to make the tears run faster and harder.  "I promise, I will."

"Such a smart kid…you're so smart.  Put those smarts to good use.  Don't screw up like your old man…"  His other hand snaked forward and ruffled my dark tresses.  "Be a doctor…do somethin' good.  Help people…smart as whip, my boy."  Suddenly he'd stopped talking to me, instead he was looking over me.  Talking to some ghost from his past that was standing in my shadow.  Some drunken allusion  "My handsome, green-eyed boy."

It was the perfect time.  The perfect chance to reach out to my father, incapacitated as he was.  To the naïveté of a ten year old child, it was the perfect time.

"No Dad, I don't wanna be a doctor.  I'm gonna be a soldier…like you were."  The effect of those words was instantaneous.  It was like some kind of magical sobriety welled up within his veins.  His arms dropped away, and his eyes left the invisible ghost behind me.  They didn't focus on me either.  Instead, they traveled back to the mute TV, his body shifting away from me.

"Go to bed," he muttered after what felt like an hour of strange, cold silence.  My juvenile brain couldn't wrap around this sudden transformation.  It wasn't supposed to be like this…he was supposed to be happy…he was supposed to love me now.

"But Dad-,"

"Go…just go."  He was deflated.  He was the emotionless mannequin he had always been.  My one chance, the one time I had to connect with him, and I blew it.  I lay awake in bed that night, and I couldn't stop the tears that kept falling.

Little did I know that my Dad was doing the same, next to the prone, sleeping figure of my mother.  A pale reflection of my Dad, that's what I was.  A young version of my him, except for the eyes.  My leaf green eyes.  I cried because looking at them made my Dad want to cry.  He never looked me in the eyes…he couldn't bear to.

I couldn't bear the lonely spot he left in my heart.

Mutant issues-or mutant problems as some called them-were prominent topics of debate my entire young life.  Dad didn't agree with the way the President was handling the controversial subject.  Not that her ever said anything outright, not when I was in earshot, but I could just tell from his expression as he turned off the nightly news.  Once I heard him mutter something about "genocide at the hands of frightened conservatives" or something like that.  I made the mistake once of bringing up the issue at dinner.

"I think one of the boys at school is one," I muttered thickly through my mashed potatoes.  "This new kid."

"One what, honey?" my mother asked, in that distracted yet attentive manner that so many parents display at the diner table.  

"One of those mutant-freak thingies from on the news."  I shrugged nonchalantly.  "The other kids were making fun of him 'cause he has these funny lookin' eyes-," the end of my sentence was cut off suddenly by a loud clatter.  My dad's chair skidded back and ricocheted against the wall, falling to the floor.  

"Jeffrey," my Mom called in her warning tone, standing up herself, but my father didn't stop.  I felt his arm slip around my waist and he hauled me off my chair and into the living room.  I yelped as he deposited me unceremoniously on the couch..  I flipped myself over as my eyes cleared from the dizzying ride.  Dad clamped his hand on my chin and forced me to face him.  I couldn't help it, I whimpered.

"Rick, look at me," he ordered.  There were quick footsteps reverberating in the hall, and my Mom's face appeared 'round the doorway.

"Jeffrey stop!  He didn't mean it!" she cried.

"Rick," Dad began again, completely ignoring her.

"He didn't know any better!" Mom pleaded again.  My eyes quickly slid off my father's seething face and onto my mother's fuming one.  Suddenly, two hands clamped themselves to the sides of my face and turned it again.

"Look at _me, _Rick!" Dad demanded again.  There was madness dancing in his eyes, the likes of which I'd never seen before.  I felt another whimper force its way through my lips.  "I don't ever want to hear you use that word in this house ever again, do you hear me?" he raged.  I nodded timidly.  I shot another scarred glance at my Mommy.  "Look at **_me_**, Rick!"  The hands on my face slipped down to my shoulders and he shook me slightly.  "I don't care if you swear like a sailor all the days of your life…"

"Jeffrey, stop it!  Right now!"

"…But I don't ever want to hear you call someone…"

"You're scarring him!"

"…a freak!"

It was the only time I ever saw my father that angry.  Even during my senior year, when I told my father that I was enlisting after graduation, he never got that upset with me.  He just seemed to fall in on himself and deflate, like he head during all the other problematic times in my life.  It was almost enough to make me whish he'd get angry…almost.

            It was never good enough for him, my Dad.  Whatever I did, it never pulled the love out of him.  I guess that part of me, even as a grown man, held onto that naive belief that if I could just do a little better, work a little harder, that Dad and I would finally find a way to love one another.  But that heart-to-heart, declaration of fatherly devotion never came.  I never got to tell him about my promotion-the promotion I hoped would finally make him proud of my career choice-because the inevitable happened. 

About six months ago Dad had a stroke and died, all very sudden.  The neighbor lady found him in the kitchen a day later, after seeing that the back door was swinging wide open.  I cried for about the first time in twenty years, but part of me was happy.  Dad has missed Mom so much when she passed and…well, at least now they were together.  But then came the long task of clearing out the house and getting it ready for sale.  We couldn't afford to keep it just out of sentimental value.  

I took some time off work went back home.  It felt like some messed up summer vacation, being back in that house and sleeping in my old room at the age of 29.  The days were some of the warmest on record that summer, and moving out was hot, hard work.  Yet slowly but surely the house grew emptier.  The furniture and valuables were divided between me and Dad's remaining brothers and cousins and various other family members.  Anything they didn't want and I couldn't get home went to Goodwill, as did most of his clothing.  I don't think that it was an accident, though, that I found _the_ box the day before I was due to head back to Missouri.  Dad had moved it apparently, and I almost didn't see it in its hiding space behind the water heater.  Had I found it earlier, I probably would've tossed it away.  But then, just before I left…I couldn't leave it behind.

The day I sold the house was one of the toughest in my life.  It was more than just land and a house full of memories that I was letting go of.  It was like I was losing the very essence of my Dad himself.  The last…and the only part of him that I'd ever really known.

"We have to, hun.  I know how much it means to you," my wife said wrapping her arm around my waist as we stood on the lawn, looking at a foundation of my childhood memories for the last time.  "But we can't afford to keep it."  A sigh escaped my lips.

"I know…it's just hard."  I had no idea how true that statement was…and would become.  When all the work was done, and my life slowed back to its normal pace once more, my Dad's death really caught up to me.  Work was hard.  Everything reminded me of him.  After all, I went into the service because of him.  And that's when everything changed, because one of my supervisors noticed my altered behavior, and he had something to say about it.

"I know how hard it must be for you right now.  I lost my father three years ago, so believe me, I can relate to how you feel," General McCormick said as he ushered me into his office one afternoon, about three weeks after my return.  He gestured for me to have a seat before continuing, " I believe that you told me he was the reason you enlisted after high school, yes?"  Damn, McCormick had a good memory.  I'd only mentioned that in passing at a Christmas party years ago.

"Yes, well, he was in the army in his younger days too."  I was a little embarrassed about what I had to say next, but I felt that the General's comment warranted some kind of explanation.  "He…I never found out if he ever saw duty or not.  He didn't really like to talk about it."  This information didn't really seem to surprise the general.

"That's pretty understandable," he muttered, but then his voice took on a different tone, and I got the feeling that chit-chat time was over.  "Look Judson, I'll get to the point.  You entered the service because you admired your old man.  Because you wanted to help people."  With a chilling shudder, I remember the encounter I had with my father in the living room that night, so many years ago.

_"…do somethin' good.  Help people…"_  Dad's words echoed in the back of my mind. 

 I found myself nodding as McCormick spoke.  

"You're a stand-up guy, Judson.  Impeccable and air-tight record, good recommendations, sense of honor," the General continued.  I felt my ego swelling a little with every word he spoke.  "Which is why I need you Judson.  I need to help me lead a special opps team..  I need to help me revolutionize the military system, to help me help the people.  Can you do that?"

"Sir, it would be my honor," was my sharp, official answer.

"Then welcome aboard Judson.  The Friends of Humanity should be honored to have you…"  The General offered me his hand, and…for just a moment, I felt the hair prickle on the back of my neck.  Like there was someone standing behind me that I couldn't see…but then the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come.

I knew what I had to do.

I had to help people.

I had to help protect _the_ people.

I shook McCormick's hand.  

The special training and de-briefing I was to receive for my new position took place at an undisclosed and private location.  My wife, and little Jessica, they weren't allowed to come with me.  Amber, the love of my life, helped finish packing that day, as many tears falling into the duffel bag as clothes.  She was just about to close the bag, in fact,  when I tell her to wait.  I was running late, but I dug through the closet frantically anyways.  I knew it  was there somewhere…ah, here!  Triumphantly, from beneath an old comforter and a carton of baby pictures, I found the old box again.  With loving tenderness, I drew out the worn uniform.  

"Oh, honey," my wife couldn't hide the sadness in her eyes as I showed her the faded fatigues.  The missing piece in the puzzle of my Dad's history.  She couldn't hide her pride either.  Delicately, deftly she folded the worm material and placed it with the rest of my personal effects.  Then, with the bravery that only military spouses can show, she straightened up and smiled, the tears gone and locked away until the night would come and she would sleep in an empty bed.  

Her long arms wrapped around my neck in one brief, passionate embrace.  Then with a light touch she caressed the 'Judson' neatly stitched in white lettering across my chest.  A deft straightening of the badge below my name, which reads proudly stated **F.O.H Commander**, and I was ready to go.  

The sight of my family made my chest swell with confidence as well as making me think about what I was about to do, at the steps I was about to take.  I thought back, and wondered if my Dad ever felt this way: strong and fearless, ready to serve no matter the cost and strong enough to change the world.  I couldn't help but guess that he did.  I pictured him in uniform, on some historic mission, like Afghanistan, boldly looking danger in the eye.  That mental image had gotten me through a lot of tough times.  I knew that in the end, Dad was happy for me, and that he'd accepted my career path for what it was.  I was trying to let him go, one day at a time.  Slowly, but surely letting his voice fade from my mind, so that the grief might dissipate a little.  That the healing might begin.  

But at that moment, as I kissed my wife goodbye to the tearful serenade provided by my young daughter's sobs, I couldn't help but think only of him, and wonder if he really would've been proud of me.

A/N: Now go tell me what you thought! :)


End file.
